A gruesome murderThe biggest news is the emergence of nationally renowned Centurion Ministries, a faith-based legal group in Princeton, N.J., that has helped exonerate more than 40 people.

Centurion is taking on the case of Gary Bennett, a Palm Bay man convicted in the 1983 murder of 54-year-old Helen Nardi.

Nardi's death was a gruesome one.

According to Sentinel reports from the time, she was found stabbed 26 times in the neck, chest and back with an ice pick, steak knife, screwdriver and pair of scissors. The ice-pick blade and scissors were left embedded in her nude body.

Prosecutors, however, needed to tie Bennett to the weapons, which Preston and his dog helped do. The dog first sniffed Bennett and then, according to Preston, found the same scent on crucial evidence.

Prosecutors also relied upon fingerprints in the victim's house, which Bennett argued he probably left three days earlier when visiting the victim, whom he knew. They also used testimony from jailhouse snitches — who were promised leniency in exchange for their help.

Centurion Ministries attorney Kate Germond did not want to discuss details of Bennett's case this week, saying she hoped she could work hand in hand with local officials. If she does, she might not be working with Wolfinger, who as a public defender briefly represented Bennett before he was elected state attorney in 1984.

At Wolfinger's request, Gov. Charlie Crist assigned another prosecutor to handle any new developments in the case: Orange-Osceola's Lawson Lamar.

A new inquiryMeanwhile, Brevard-Seminole Public Defender James Russo is launching an inquiry of his own.

Russo's goal is to try to find out how many other people Preston helped convict. And he received some help last weekend from Florida Today, the Melbourne-based newspaper that did an impressive job scanning its archives to uncover the names of about a dozen more cases in which Preston was involved.

The public defender had hoped Wolfinger's office would actually pursue this matter.

Said Pirolo: "He has an obligation from a legal, moral and ethical standpoint."

Wolfinger knows that some of Preston's cases, which predate his tenure, went bad. He has not only admitted it; he apologized on his office's behalf after much-belated DNA tests directly contradicted some of the state's prior claims. But he has refused to conduct an investigation to see whether others were improperly convicted, essentially arguing that the burden is on the convicted to mount their own defense.

That line infuriates Gary Bennett's niece, Rebecca, 27, who was a toddler when her uncle went to prison — and whose family has always believed her uncle is innocent.

"You know, that sounds good, saying we should just take care of it ourselves," Rebecca Bennett said. "But we're a middle-class family. We can't afford top-notch lawyers. And this has just been awful."

The recent spate of attention has given the Bennetts the first hope they've had in years.